Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Reading Stained Glass (iv): a war memorial window

Today, 11th November 2014, seems
a good day to reflect on a complicated type of memorial: war memorial stained
glass. After the Armistice in 1918 the windows paid for and installed in
churches and cathedrals by families, communities, schools and regiments no
doubt gave consolation and a sense of pride at the sacrifice of those whom the
glass commemorated, and at having done something fitting. I’m not sure they are
quite so comforting today. Here’s why.

The parish church of St Peter and St Paul,
at Clare in Suffolk, is stately and light: most of the windows are clear glass.
Some heraldic panels and other fragments in the East window are all that remain
of the medieval glass, most of which was smashed by the Puritan iconoclast,
William Dowsing, in 1643. But there is heraldic glass, too, in the tracery of a
window in the North aisle, and indeed these heraldic signatures may offer a
clue to the donor: alongside shields representing the diocese of St Edmundsbury
and Ipswich, those of an early Earl of Norfolk buried in the Abbey of Bury St
Edmund, and the arms of England itself, one of the shields displays the arms of
the Haberdashers’ Company. No hint of the donor is given where you’d normally expect to find it: in the inscription at the bottom. Instead the window, by the distinguished stained glass artist FC Eden (1864-1944), has an austere,
academic Latin dedication:

In honour of the most
precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ and in pious memory of those who
offered their life for their country.

So it is a Great War memorial window. At first sight this is simply a stylised Crucifixion
scene, with Mary and St John on either side of the Cross, but the design is
significantly elaborated: at the top of the central light sits God surrounded
by six-winged cherubim, and with the Dove as it were on his lap. Pale beams of
light radiate downwards from this highly schematized representation of the
Throne of Heaven. Then, at the top of the Cross, there is a kneeling angel immediately
above the Pelican in her Piety, that moving emblem of the sacrificial nature of
Corpus Christi and the Crucifixion. At
each end of the cross bar sit images of the sun and the moon, conventionally
seen in crucifixion windows of both medieval and modern design and representing
the eclipse, the darkness that covered the earth at the third hour, when Christ
died.

On either side, in the two outer lights,
are two figures who further help to identify this as a war memorial window: St
Michael (left) and St George (right). Dressed in full armour and holding a
sword by his side, St Michael carries in his hands the scales with which, at the
Last Judgement, he will weigh the souls of the righteous and the unrighteous.
He stands upon an almost inconspicuous snake, (the Serpent – i.e. Satan) whom
he has defeated. Opposite him is St George, who would usually be depicted in
such a window having just slain the dragon at his feet, but here he’s shown simply
in an attitude of devotion before the Cross. It’s as if this window
deliberately resists any triumphalism. The emphasis is all on sacrifice
rather than on victory. Texts appear above both saints: one text in fact, the
Vulgate rendering of Hebrews 10.14:

‘Una enim oblatione
consummavit’ + ‘In sempiternum sanctificatos’

For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are
sanctified.

An important detail: the Latin word ‘oblatio’ – here
referring to Christ’s self-sacrifice, his offering of himself – comes from the
same root (obferre > offere) as the word ‘obtulerunt’ used in the window’s
inscription to refer to the soldiers’ offering of their own lives pro patria. The self-offering of the soldiers is thus semantically associated with the self-offering of Christ.

And now the most startling feature of all: from the hands
and side of the crucified Christ blood streams into an oblong basin or tank out
of which the Cross has sprouted. Sprouted seems the right word for, like a tree,
it has produced branches which provide the pedestals on which stand the
statue-like figures of the Virgin and St John; and from one of these branches a
new shoot has begun to sprout.Actually,
what I have called a basin or tank is a bath full almost to the brim: visibly
and literally, a crimson blood-bath. Nowhere else have I seen this
extraordinary, ironic image in a war memorial window. Indeed, I have only ever
seen it in one other window – a tiny 16th century silver-stained
roundel in an interior window of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. And in that particular roundel naked figures are shown washing themselves in the bath itself.

Given then that Eden's window is to be understood as a
memorial to The Fallen, it appears to invite us to identify the dead of the
war as ‘they which’ (to quote from the Book of Revelation) ‘came through the
great tribulation’ and have ‘washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb’? For just
as the blood spilt in 1914-18 is transmuted here into the sacrificial blood
spilt on the Cross, so the bath in this window is transformed into the tomb in
the garden of Joseph of Arimathea. This is where Mary Magdalene, seen kneeling
on the grass among the flowers, has come with her precious ointment, to embalm
the corpse that is no longer there.

One final link connects the scene above to the dedication at
the base of window: a small medallion with a shield depicting the Instruments
of the Passion – crown of thorns, nails, spear and sponge of vinegar. The
shield is surrounded by a wreath studded by five white flowers, a wreath at
once of victory and of mourning. I have to repeat here that I find this window
moving but discomforting. The visual pun (for that is what it amounts to) on a
blood-bath almost disgusts me: is it really theologically and historically acceptable
to imply that the English dead of the Great War – this window’s heraldry is
wholly English and Anglican – have become Christian martyrs, exchanging the blood-bath of Passchendaele for the blood-bath of Passion-tide? To admit that
millions of lives were sacrificed in France and Flanders a century ago is one
thing; to suggest, however, that the lucky winners, and presumably they alone, were making a Christ-like ‘sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction’ is surely
another.

1 comment:

Thanks, Adrian, for this measured and informative and thought-provoking piece. Having spent quite a lot of time yesterday studying the opening movement of the War Requiem with two classes of London teenagers, I can't help recalling one line:

About Me

I live in Gloucestershire. Before retiring, I was Director of Public and Professional Programmes at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. I'm President of the English Association and series editor of Cambridge Contexts in Literature. My recent publications include 'World and Time: Teaching Literature in Context' (C.U.P. 2009) and 'Extramural: Literature and Lifelong Learning’ published by Lutterworth Press in March 2012.
I’m a trustee of the Kempe Trust, and write a Kempe blog about my research into the stained glass of Charles Eamer Kempe and his Studio: http://thekempetrust.co.uk
For (a lot) more about me, go to my website:
www.adrianbarlow.co.uk